David Davis

As a system administrator with growing demand on your servers you will eventually run into a capacity bottleneck in your CPU, RAM, Disk, or network. These performance issues can be difficult to identify and troubleshoot without a quality tool. For typical Windows servers, performance management tools can often be difficult to install, configure, and obtain…

In our previous article, “What you need to know about VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB)“, we provided an overview of how VCB can help you. In this article, we will explore the command line utilities provided with VCB. There is no GUI interface for VCB so these tools are THE tools that you get with VCB….

While it is normal to login as “administrator” when you are testing VMware ESX Virtual Center and normal to login as root while you are testing VMware ESX Server, as soon as your Virtual Infrastructure moves into production, you will want system administrators login as themselves. In fact, best practices dictate this. Besides providing accountability,…

Every network admin is going to have trouble with network links on a Cisco router, at one point or another. The best way to troubleshoot any networking issues is to use the OSI model and go layer by layer. In my article How to use the OSI Model to Troubleshoot Networks, we talked about the…

Just released is the latest enterprise virtualization platform from VMware – ESX Server 3.5. However, is there really anything useful in this release? Is it even deserving of a “point 5” release name or should it have just been ESX Server 3.0.3? Let’s find out… Where are the new features in VMware ESX Server 3.5?…

You are probably already familiar with what VMware ESX Server is, how it is revolutionary, and how virtualization is changing server infrastructure forever. Perhaps you are already an ESX Server user, perhaps not. Either way, the latest version of ESX Server, 3i (could go even farther than ESX Server 3, in changing the face of…

One of the most important features of VMware ESX Server / Virtual Infrastructure is the ability to configure Cluster Pools and Resource Pools. How can these pools help you and what is the difference between them? Let’s find out. What are VMware ESX Server Cluster Pools? A cluster is defined as “a group of tightly…

Just like every other password, it is inevitable that, eventually, you will loose or forget the root password to one of your VMware ESX Server systems. So how do you reset your VMware ESX Server root password? Let’s find out… 1. Shutdown and Reboot your VMware ESX Server If you don’t know the VMware ESX…

The VMware Infrastructure package consists of 3 applications – VMware ESX, Virtual Center, and VMware Consolidated Backup. In this article, we’ll learn the features of VMware’s Virtual Center (VC) and what it can do for you. Features of VMware Virtual Center For those who aren’t took familiar with VC, let’s start off by hitting the…

In our previous series on Cisco IOS Access-lists Part 1 and Part 2 , we covered all the basics of ACL’s and went through a real-world example. In the past, it was not possible to edit an ACL. Now, the impossible is possible with IOS 12.2 or later. In this article, you’ll learn how you…

If you are used to working with home networking gear you are used to an integrated device that “does it all”. On a home network, you may have one box that is a cable/DSL modem, router, firewall, switch, and wireless access point all in one. It is amazing all the functions they can fit into…

How to Setup VLAN Trunking Protocol (VTP) on Cisco Switches In our last article about VLAN’s (Read ore about it on the What is a VLAN? How to Setup a VLAN on a Cisco Switch article), we learned about how VLAN’s provide greater performance and security for your LAN. Unfortunately, if you have more than…